Playback ’95] Aum Shinrikyo Members Reclaim Their Priest!　The “All Nippon Airways Plane Hijacking Incident” that Shook the Japanese Archipelago

What did “FRIDAY” report 10, 20, and 30 years ago? In “Playback Friday,” we revisit the topics that were hot at the time. This time, we will introduce the article from the July 14, 1995 issue, which was published 30 years ago : “The results showed that everyone was safe, but the early morning raid was a shocker. The shudder of the “Kiseki-esque” probability.

On June 21, 1995, an incident occurred that shook the archipelago. A criminal claiming to be a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult hijacked ANA Flight 857 bound for Hakodate and demanded the release of Shoko Asahara.

The man threatened the flight attendants and others with a clear plastic bag containing a liquid, claiming it was sarin, and the public watched with bated breath as almost every channel on television broadcast a special news report on the indiscriminate terrorist attack, which had been feared since Asahara’s arrest on May 16.

The article reported on the police’s forced raid in the early morning hours of the day after the hijacking (the descriptions in parentheses are quoted from previous articles. All ages and titles are current at the time).

The early morning raid operation by special forces wrapped in a veil

“Positioned under the plane, over.

Hokkaido A Team, you are under the plane.

Hokkaido B Team, we’re going to set up the ladder.

Clock, five, four, three, two, one, go. Through the door!

“Yes!” (yells and screams)

This is a graphic radio exchange between the local task force and the riot police on the scene at the decisive moment of the early morning raid.

The hijacking of the All Nippon Airways flight was the first hijacking in Japanese hijacking history to be solved by a “forced entry” 16 hours after it occurred. One of the passengers described the scene during the raid as follows

It was all for His Eminence.

There was a flapping sound, and a police officer wearing a bulletproof vest suddenly jumped into the room. “How many people are the culprits? They ran down the aisle shouting, “How many are the culprits? When they realized it was over, there was spontaneous applause among the passengers, who shook hands with their neighbors and hugged each other in joy.

The arrested culprit was not an Aum follower, but a bank employee, A (53), who was on leave. According to the flight attendant’s testimony, 20 minutes after takeoff, A imitated stabbing a plastic bag filled with liquid with a screwdriver and said, “Everything is for His Eminence. If you do what I say, I will spare the lives of the passengers.

A also put earphones in his ears and said, “I ‘m getting information from my friends outside,” and “I’ve set the timer for the bomb, ” all the while smelling “the shadow of the Aum.

From the word ‘reverend,’ I thought it was someone associated with Aum” (chief purser) and “I thought the contents of the plastic bag must be poison gas when I heard him say, ‘You know that if you poke this, all the passengers will lose their lives,'” (stewardess B).

Ms. B said that the moment the police stepped in, she saw the skid and took the plastic bag and ran to the door.

All 365 passengers were safe. When the lid was opened, the murder weapon was a single screwdriver. The “sarin” in the plastic bag was water. It was all a bluff, but the culprit had slipped through the baggage check, which was supposed to be strictly guarded because of the “indiscriminate terrorism. It sends chills down my spine to think of what would have happened if they had really brought sarin with them.

An expert on airplane terrorism also pointed out that it was “miraculous” that no passengers were killed in the forced entry. It was not a situation in which one could be happy that the case had been solved.

When the culprit is caught… the surprising end to the mayhem

The Metropolitan Police Department’s 6th Mobile Police Task Force Special Action Company (SAP), which was deployed, was a secret unit that was still little known even within the police force at the time.

However, this incident led to the official announcement of its existence along with the Osaka Prefectural Police Special Forces, and in 1996, it was established in six prefectural police departments, including Hokkaido, Aichi, and Fukuoka, as the “SAT,” a police special unit in charge of anti-terrorist operations.

The perpetrator, A, was an elite employee of a major trust bank who, despite having a wife and child, had a close relationship with a Ginza club mama and even had a child with her.

However, he was reassigned to the left when the bubble economy burst. In addition, his relationship with his wife cooled down.

In 1994, he was forced to take a leave of absence due to his chronic asthma and autonomic nervous system disorder, and “I thought everything was over,” he said at his trial.

A was sentenced to 10 years in prison in September 1999, and the sentence has been finalized.

The hijacking, which reminded the Japanese people of the Aum Affair and terrorized the whole country, was a sad incident caused by a desperate middle-aged man.